POWERHOUSE STRUCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 6

POWERHOUSE STRUCK.

FIERCE ELECTRICAL STORM.

DAMAGE IN TARANAKI.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

NEW PLYMOUTH, Wednesday.

Ripping through arrestors and extensively damaging the main coupling switch of an oil circuit-breaker, a direct charge of lightning in the vicinity of the New Plymouth Borough Council's powerhouse at Mangorei set fire to a line panel to-night. A powerhouse employee said the building rocked as if struck by an earthquake. The vibration caused by the thunder shook books from the shelves in the nearby house of an employee, and the telephone was blown from the wall of a house in Mangorei Road.

Power was not restored in the vicinity uutil midnight, but the failure at New Plymouth, although complete, was of short duration.

An electrical storm advancing from the ,: est caused interruptions, first in the ( akura district by blowing out transformer fuses at 5.30 p.m. It discharged most of its fury, however, half an hour later in the Mangorei district, damaging transformer fuses. At the same time as the powerhouse was struck most Mangorei Road telephones were put out of action.

The lightning flickered constantly throughout North Taranaki all evening, accompanied at times by heavy rain.